When Confronted with Evil, Too Many in Society Look Away

I am afraid for
my family. I am afraid for my community. I am afraid for my country.

Several weeks
ago, on a Sunday night, my wife and I were eating our dinner at the Chinese
buffet in our community. I heard a commotion over by the cash register.

At first, I
thought it was an overly excited softball team after a big win. Then, I heard
“do any of you have jobs,” followed by “you’re all probably on welfare.”

The increasingly
loud voice shouted, “Go back where you came from.” Some racial slurs, the most
offensive kind, filled the air.

I went over to
the cash register. Eight young women of color in Muslim garb were standing
there, ranging from maybe 8 years old to 20 or so.

I asked what
was going on and was told that a woman was calling them n—— and telling
them to get out of the country.

She then asked
me, looking a bit confused, if the woman doing the shouting realized she was in
a Chinese restaurant.

I went out to
the sidewalk where the restaurant manager was talking with the disruptive woman
and her male companion. I got my phone out in case I needed to call the police;
she was quite agitated.

The woman
looked at me and asked if I were calling the police.

I replied, “Not
yet,” explaining that I was there to provide safe passage for any of the young
women who wished to leave the restaurant.

Finally, the
woman and her male companion walked to their SUV. As she got into her vehicle,
she shouted – to no one in particular – for whom she thought people should vote
in the upcoming election.

Why did this
scare me?

I was not
surprised there are people like her in my community. There always have been and
always will be; this is nothing new. This is not what scared me.

I was concerned
because she felt free, unprovoked by anything more than the color of these
young women’s skin and their religious garb, to shout ugly and foul-mouthed
things at them in a crowded restaurant on a Sunday evening in my community.

She felt she
had license to verbally assault strangers young enough to be her daughters and
granddaughters in a restaurant without any consequences. I found that
unsettling.

Reflecting upon
this, I realized what really scared me: She was right.

She was free to
do this without any consequences. No one intervened. Everyone else sat at their
tables, enjoying their meal, doing nothing.

For this woman,
there were no consequences except a request from the manager that they move
outside.

That restaurant
should have emptied out. Everyone should have been on the sidewalk forming a
corridor of safety for these young and shaken women.

The foul-mouthed
woman did not scare me; the passivity of everyone else scared me.

As Martin
Luther King Jr. wrote: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it
as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting
against it is really cooperating with it.”

That woman had
a restaurant full of co-conspirators that Sunday evening in August.

William Butler
Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming:”

“Turning and turning in the widening
gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot
hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the
worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

“The best lack
all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” and the center
gives way. Jesus was concerned about what happens when the “best lack all
conviction.”

“You are the
salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be
restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled
underfoot,” Jesus said.

“You are the
light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting
a lamp puts it under the bushel basket but on the lampstand, and it gives light
to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so
that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”
(Matthew 5:13-16).

It is time for
some salt and light because I am getting truly concerned.

Editor’s note: A version
of this article first appeared on Kelsey’s blog, I’m Just Saying. It is
used with permission.